The Author

Kem Luther, a Canadian-American writer, has at one time or another claimed to be a
historian, genealogist, philosopher, linguist and scientist.
In this book he dons his oldest hat, that of the field naturalist.

The Book

Published in 2016 by the Oregon State University Press, Boundary Layer
is a tour through the ground-hugging organisms
of the Pacific Northwest and an introduction to
the fascinating people who study them.

The Stegnon

The mosses, fungi, lichen, and plants that live along the ground are more than just
low-paid extras in their ecosystems. What plankton are to the oceans, the stegnon organisms
are to the land -- the precondition and foundation of biotic life.

What the book is about

Blurb from the back cover:

"In atmospheric science, a boundary layer is the band of air nearest
the ground. In the Pacific Northwest, the boundary layer teems with
lichens, mosses, ferns, fungi, and diminutive plants. It’s an alternate,
overlooked universe whose denizens author Kem Luther calls the
stegnon, the terrestrial equivalent of oceanic plankton.

"In Boundary Layer, Luther takes a voyage of discovery through the
stegnon, exploring the life forms that thrive there and introducing
readers to the scientists who study them. With a keen ear for
conversation and an eye for salient detail, the author brings a host
of characters to life, people as unique and intriguing as the species
inhabiting the stegnon.

"An exhilarating mix of natural history, botanical exploration, and
philosophical speculation, Boundary Layer guides readers, in the end,
into the author’s own landscape of metaphor. It will be welcomed
by naturalists, botanists, outdoor adventurers, and anyone who savors
good storytelling. Luther translates into luminous prose what boundary
regions have to say, not only about the in-between places of nature,
but also about the conceptual borderlands that lie between species and
ecosystems, culture and nature, science and the humanities."

Read a bit

Stegnon \'steg-n?n\ n. pl. stegna. Biological chinking; a general term for all sessile microorganisms
and meso-organisms (bacteria, fungi, algae, lichens, mosses, hepatics, etc.) that grow on or within the non-aquatic
surfaces of the world, including rock, soil, and vegetation.
– Trevor Goward

Preface

A European-derived culture thrust itself into the Pacific Northwest in the first half of the
nineteenth century. Tens of thousands of settlers crowded onto the Oregon Trail, and by the
middle of the 1850s, lands that North American aboriginals had managed for millennia suddenly
had new managers.

The shift was delayed a bit on the Canadian side—Europeans were largely confined to Fort Langley
on the mainland and Fort Victoria on Vancouver Island until the 1850s—but when it came, the change
was as decisive as the one in the United States. If we had to pick a date for the management
turnover in British Columbia, we might choose 1862, the year when smallpox killed half of the
province’s First Nations people.

The switch to new land managers in the Pacific Northwest is not an event, however, than can be
pegged to a given year, either in the United States or in Canada. It happened over many decades.
And it’s still not over. As you read this, two dozen British Columbia lawyers are billing all of
their hours to negotiating treaties to replace those that were signed during the turnover.

The proximity of these changes must come as a shock to the Old World historians who parcel out
their narratives in centuries. As recently as a hundred years ago, hikers could head out on foot
from Victoria or Seattle and find themselves, within a few hours, in nooks of nature that no
European foot had touched, no European eye had seen. These near-in-time events, connected to
us not only by what we read in books but also by stories handed down from parents and grandparents,
condition how we think. The land retains an imprint of its aboriginal management and, beyond that,
its self-management.

The Pacific Northwest, it seems to me, is a kind of living laboratory. We run
experiments here, sometimes without even knowing it, that probe how cultures coexist with nature.
Our experiments are perhaps no different than those that are carried out in other regions of North
America, but they seem more pressing here. The answers feel like they live nearer to the questions.
The experiments that we run in this living laboratory often employ the vocabulary and concepts of
biology. Like most people who have a formal education, I reach for this vocabulary when I try to
understand what we are learning. I’ll make use of it on these pages, when I visit this living
laboratory. I will also, however, test the limits of this language, and to do this I will have
to stand in wider circles than the ones drawn by biologists.

My trips in this book, my hikes to the unexplored, will take us to strange places. We will not
journey outward, into the lands on the horizon, but downward, into the stegnon, the land cover
of mosses, lichens, fungi, and small plants. The significance of the Pacific Northwest’s stegnon
is, like the plankton in the ocean to the west of us, undervalued. It is also misunderstood. The
words and concepts cultivated by the scientific community can, when applied to the stegnon,
conceal as much as they reveal.

To light our way through this mysterious region, I employ the metaphor of a boundary layer.
The first chapter of this book probes the metaphor itself. In the middle chapters, I chase
this metaphor through local ecosystems. Pursuit of the metaphor brings us, in the end, to
three boundary layers of a different type: the conceptual ones that lie between species and
ecosystems, nature and culture, and science and the humanities.

Thoughts on the book

March, 2016

Writers write what they know. Until I began to write non-academic books, however, I did not know what I knew.

In particular, I did not really know how much my connection to the natural world was a part of my take on life.
My writing has always ranged over a variety of topics. For some reason, though, I have found myself returning, time and
time again, to an interior spring of fascination with the natural environment.

I’m not sure where this interest came from. I can point to several early experiences with outdoor life (boy scouting,
gardening, working on a western ranch), but these could be effects rather than causes. I have wondered at times whether
I might be in the grip of a deep programming, perhaps even a genetic one.

Howard Gardner’s book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, when it came out in the early 1980s, was
an intellectual revelation. My generation learned from Gardner that we brought to our experiences profoundly programmed
ways of interacting and understanding. Gardner, battling the tendency to identify thinking with the narrow set
of skills assessed by IQ tests, called them intelligences, but they are much broader skill sets than his term suggests.
They are, if you like, modalities of the mind, the toolkits we bring to the task of interpreting the world. They embrace
intuition and feeling as well as overt thinking. In his first publication, Gardner outlined seven of these modalities,
adding five new modes to the verbal and logical skills tested in schools. These became his musical–rhythmic,
bodily–kinesthetic, interpersonal, visual-spatial, and intrapersonal intelligences. In the 1990s, Gardner admitted that
he had overlooked an important modality. “If I were to rewrite Frames of Mind today,” he said, “I would probably add an
eighth intelligence—the intelligence of the naturalist. It seems to me that the individual who is able readily to recognize
flora and fauna, to make other consequential distinctions in the natural world, and to use this ability productively
(in hunting, in farming, in biological science) is exercising an important intelligence and one that is not adequately
encompassed in the current list.”

When I heard about Gardner’s correction, I wondered whether his new modality might be part of my own makeup. It might
explain, for example, my own drive to place myself in the frame of the natural world when I write. It is an explanation,
of course, that does not explain—it just kicks the explanation into a place where I don’t feel the need to explain it.
It’s a part of who I am, for reasons that I can’t fully grasp with the other modalities that I bring to my understanding
of life.

Boundary Layer, which OSU Press is publishing in May, is my most recent venture into this naturalist pre-self. Though it
is all about the lands and ecosystems of BC and the Pacific Northwest, the approach I use in the book took shape some
fifteen years ago, while I was still living in Central Canada. Queen’s Quarterly, a literary journal based in Kingston,
Ontario, published an article with the title “Boundary Layer.” In this essay I narrated my explorations of local biotic
life just above and below the soil line. The article’s name was a play on words. A boundary layer is a technical term
for a transition zone. To muck about in the terrestrial boundary layer, I had to physically lay myself down in this
narrow region, to get face to face with the soil and what grows there.

When I moved to the Pacific Northwest nine years ago, I found myself drawn once again to the overlooked biological
zones along the ground. The boundary layers in British Columbia, however, were quite different from the ones I had
known in Central Canada. The mosses, fungi, lichens, and small plants of the West Coast boundary layers were more bold,
more lush. They had a commanding presence in their ecological networks. Intrigued by this new environment, I wrote several
articles about the denizens of this lower region for Pacific Northwest magazines. I also started giving talks to
natural history organizations and taking groups on guided walks. In 2008, when I finished the social history volume
that had occupied me for several years, I decided it was time to get book-serious about my interest in the denizens
of the boundary layer. By 2012, I had the first draft of the book largely complete.

The narrations in Boundary Layer owe a great debt to the army of biologists who spend their lives investigating the
humble inhabitants of the regions just above the soil line. Without their research, all would be speculation. But
the solemnities of their science did not always satisfy my questions. Vocabularies honed on macroflora and macrofauna
had a tendency, I discovered, to carve away several of the most interesting issues posed by borderland organisms.
Some of these less-than-orthodox questions, I found, were already being asked by a few of those who were immersed
in detailed research on boundary layer organisms, so brought the lives and words of these inquisitive people into
the text as a way to explore such questions. Ten Pacific Northwest naturalists agreed to let me expose in print
the experiences that brought them to their unique perspectives on a neglected segment of the region’s biotic life.

The end of the process of writing a book, the place where the writer stands back and the
role of the reader begins, is a time of uncertainty. Who will be the readers who follow them into the journeys
they have taken? In writing Boundary Layer, I have reached into an inbred perspective, one that refuses to reduce
itself to other ways of understanding the world. While readers do not have to possess Gardner’s naturalist modality
to follow the book’s journey, those who do have it may perhaps find a message in the book that others miss.

July, 2016

On July 13, 2016, I did a 15-minute interview with
Geoff Riley on Jefferson Public Radio's morning show,
the Jefferson Exchange. Webcast can be heard
here.

August, 2016

I did an email Q&A with Gilion Dumas of the
Rose City
Reader book site. In the exchange, I talk about
some of my motivations for writing Boundary Layer
and I detail some of the major influences on my
writing. You can read the exchange
here.

January, 2017

Interesting how many PNW writers have been discussing the New Wilderness Debate in their
books. I covered it in Boundary Layer in the "Trouble With Wilderness" chapter
and have been dealing with it in more depth in some of
the talks I have been giving on the book. The writers
touching on this debate
include Emma Marris, J.B. MacKinnon, and now, Robert Moor. Moor deals with the wilderness
issue at the end of his new book, On Trails.

On Trails is a great read.
In the book, Moor deals with trails as precursors to and results of both physical and
mental travel. Highly recommended.

Where are they now?

Boundary Layer highlights the lives and work of a number of Pacific Northwest naturalists.
In the time between writing and reading that is an inevitable part of the
book publishing industry, these people have moved on with their lives. Interested in what has
happened to these book characters in recent years? I asked the people featured in the book if they
could supply an update to what has happened to them since they provided the initial interviews. Here
is what they had to say.

Andrea Pickart, when I
interviewed her in 2011, had been focusing on issues
relating to shoreline restoration. Over the last few
years, her work at Humboldt Bay National Wildlife
Refuge has shifted a bit. She now does more work on
climate change and sea level rise. In a recently
completed study, Cascadia Geosciences identified the
coastline near Lanphere Dunes as having one of the
highest rates of sea level rise in California, due
largely to local interseismic subsidence. In the
Crescent City area up the coast from Lanphere Dunes,
in contrast, sea levels are barely rising because of local uplifting.
The Refuge has started up research to track sediment transport and accumulation from the nearshore up, over, and behind the foredune.
They are also testing some adaptation measures that use vegetation type to increase resiliency.
To complicate issues, the significant 2016 El Nino brought some very high tide/storm swells
and dramatic erosion. The Refuge
will be tracking the recovery of the beach and dunes over the next few years.

Hans Roemer, though formally retired at the time I interviewed him, was working almost full-time on a series
of contracts to do plant inventories and assessments. He writes in March of 2016: "It is the first time this
year that I have no promise or assurance for contract work, at least at the modest scale it may have been in recent years.
I am 78 and not particularly looking for paid work either. Much of what has occupied me otherwise was increasingly
done as volunteer anyway." Hans, who has an unparalleled knowledge of the vascular flora -- "mountains and alpine flora," he
says, is still his "first and oldest love"--has found his interest turning toward the stegnon that is
the subject of Boundary Layer. He finds, he writes, that he "can now afford to pay more attention
now to other groups, including lichens, bryophytes and fungi. The more you learn, the more fascinating
it gets. I’ve even dabbled in insects, in particular bees and butterflies. Some of these fields of natural history
would not be there to this extent without my wonderful friends who are experts in one or the other of them."

Carl Sieber still works for Pacific Rim National Park, still walks with visitors and talks with
them about the local beach and forest ecosystems. The Wickanninish sand dunes, he says, have altered since since
I interviewed him for the book. Carl writes: "Change is the norm for healthy dune ecosystems and a most
unexpected change happened after your last visit.
Ecosystem restoration efforts had to be co-ordinated with other equally complex efforts. In February, 2012, an unexploded
mortar shell was found and the task fell to the Department of National Defence to clean up the site."
The shell was
exploded at the site two years later. "The
search for more explosives on the dunes--an area
about the size of twenty soccer pitches--was
complicated by ongoing efforts to restore the delicate local environment. Now the military clean-up is done and
great swaths of the invasive grasses have also removed. The dunes are open to the public and more open to
the wind than they have been in a long time. As i write this, it is a very windy day of March 2016. I know for
certain that right now waves of sand are slowly moving and dramatically changing that piece of the park that
is not forest, not beach, but a strange and wonderful child of both."

Danielle Bellefleur is no longer with Parks Canada. When she found out, soon after I
interviewed her, that the dune project would be put on hold and the funding cut by over 80% due to
conflicting government priorities, she took an ssignment as the Monitoring Ecologist at Gulf Islands
National Park Reserve. She was only in the new assignment for a week before that position was cut, though
she was able to spend the rest of the summer in the position before it was finally terminated.
She decided to leave Parks Canada at that point. Danielle writes: "It was a hard, difficult decision,
but I recognized that the current government (Stephen Harper was in power) and CEO of Parks Canada did not have the same
“ecology first" vision of our National Parks system (and thus, were not really following the National
Parks Act). I chose to take care of my 3-year old child, help my husband with his
company, and start a permaculture-designed Certified Organic Orchard called Fruit Forest in Cobble
Hill. I miss the incredible team Parks Canada has, but I really enjoy grafting fruit trees and
watching our orchard take shape. In two years we have grafted and planted over 300 fruit trees,
raised over 400 chickens, received Certified Organic status, and built a passive solar house. Instead
of modelling dune communities, I model orchard communities. I am still fascinated by the natural world,
but spend much of my time trying to understand how our farm ecosystem works, and trying to improve it."

Darren and Claudia Copley continue their work with BC environmental issues. Claudia
is still Senior Collections Manager in Entomology at the Royal BC Museum. She has handed over the editorship
of the Victoria Natural History Society magazine. Darren has become an expert in spider identification and
he and Claudia have been working hard to document the diversity of British Columbia spiders. Finding spiders,
says Claudia involves "a lot of stegnon manipulation: rock flipping, log rolling, stump inspecting." They use
Berlese extractors to sift spiders from soils, leaf litter, and mosses. The effort "takes us into our own
backyard and to places only accessible by helicopter (literally). It has been wonderful to so thoroughly
explore the province we have both lived in all our lives. But, whenever I look at a map, I realize how
little of it we have actually met."

Andy MacKinnon. My 2012 interviews with Andy for Boundary Layer caught him in the
middle of a number of life changes. For the next three years following the interviews, he continued with
his efforts to map and classify ecosystems and to do research in forest ecology, working intensely on
his Haida Gwaii project. To wrap up this 30-year long project, Andy published a field guide to the
Haida Gwaii ecosystems (2014). In the meantime, Simon Fraser University gave him an honorary doctorate
and he published, along with his writing buddy Jim Pojar, the field guide
Alpine Plants of the Northwest.
In 2014 Andy became a member of the vascular plants
section of COSEWIC and was elected Councillor of the
District of Metchosin. He retired from his long
career in the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural
Resources in 2015. By the time he left the Ministry,
the Research Branch, which had provided leadership
for the ecologists that were assigned to the eight
regions of the Ministry, had been disbanded.
Currently the Ministry has seven ecologists left—two in
Smithers, one in Prince George, one in Nelson, one in Kamloops,
and two in Nanaimo. Andy’s position disappeared when he retired.

Trevor Goward writes: “My academic
pursuits got knocked out of orbit a few years ago when
Canadian Forest Products announced its plans to log my
home valley near Wells Gray Park. Quite reluctantly, I
found myself forced back into public life as a
grassroots defender of wilderness values, endangered
species, and citizens’ rights. Strictly
speaking, none of this should have been necessary:
first because my community long ago entered into local
land use agreement with the B.C. government which
forbids industrial scale logging here; and second
because Don Kayne, Canfor’s CEO has publicly stated
that his company will not “support actions that impact
parks, riparian areas or areas that provide critical
habitat for species at risk” – though this is
precisely what Canfor is poised to do to Wells Gray’s
fast-dwindling Mountain Caribou herds. The upshot is
that I’m once again living the life of the
environmentalist despite my best intentions. With the
help of some very talented friends, I’ve lately
mounted a save-the-caribou campaign (http://www.wellsgrayworldheritage.ca/),
organized several different public focus events (http://www.speaktothewild.org/),
created two popular treasure hunts (http://www.waysofenlichenment.net/wells/hunt/),
and written a guidebook for kids (Treasure Wells
Gray). Just now I’m editing a major book intended
to help the next generation come to terms with the
mess we’ve left behind.” Trevor lists his goals for
the next year as finishing a couple of his book
projects, helping young people learn to be
naturalists, thinking more about lichens, and settling in again
(he hopes) to the life of the hermit.

Oluna and Adolf Ceska continue
their research on local mushrooms. Oluna’s
Observatory Hill project on Vancouver Island, now in
its twelfth year, has documented almost 1,360
different species of Observatory Hill mushrooms from
a relatively small area of about
75 hectares (180 acres). The Ceskas make about 35 to
45 collecting visits to the Hill every year. In
terms of its length and intensity, this project is
unique among the present-day North American
mycological surveys. Oluna and Adolf’s research
trips also take them to mainland BC, other parts of
Canada, and the Pacific Northwest regions of the
United States. So far, more than 10,000 specimens
from their collecting activities have been donated
to the Beaty Biodiversity Museum at the University
of British Columbia. These donations currently
represent more than a quarter of the museum’s 26,000
specimens. The documentation accompanying the
specimens, as well as related drawings and
photographs, are also posted on the
Mushroom Observer site. Based on these
collections, the UBC herbarium received a grant to
support two graduate students to do DNA sequencing
of taxonomically difficult genera Cortinarius,
Inocybe and Russula. The DNA data from
this work have helped unravel problems in these
genera and have led to the description of several
new species in the genus Cortinarius. Oluna is a
coauthor of several of the papers based on these
sequenced specimens and also a co-author of several
newly described species. In recent years, the
Ceska's contribution to mycology has been recognized
in several ways. World experts in the genus
Cortinarius named one of the new species
collected by Oluna and Adolf Cortinarius ceskae.
In 2013, Oluna and Adolf were invited by the
Canadian Botanical Association to present the
prestigious Luella Weresub Memorial Lecture. Several
months before her untimely death from ovarian
cancer, Jean Johnson and her husband Steve, aided by
additional contributions from the South Vancouver
Island Mycological Society and several other
anonymous donors, established an annual UBC award
named “Oluna and Adolf Ceska Award in Mycology.”
This award encourages undergraduate/graduate
students to study the mushrooms of British Columbia.

Terry McIntosh continues with many of the same activities that occupied him when I
interviewed him. His consulting and teaching work has expanded. He writes: "My 'informal' teaching, that is
workshops in various locations and at my home, became more formalized in 2012 when I started teaching a
two week field botany course at UBCO in Kelowna. This year marks the fifth year for the course, and the
first year that I will be teaching in July vs. late April/early May. It is focused on vascular plants of
the Okanagan area, although I do show students a few of the common mosses that make up the biological crust."
Terry's consulting work, he says, "deals with making vascular plant lists for clients as well as searching
for rare or at risk species. I still do moss identification projects and rare moss inventories, but I am
getting back to my early vascular plant roots, so to speak! But the bryophytes are not being ignored as
I am also grinding away at learning the liverworts (a long way to go)." He is currently raising funds
to launch a project to produce a much-needed book on the mosses of British Columbia.

What readers are saying

"[Boundary Layer] takes the reader on field walks with fascinating field scientists from restored sand dune ecosystems, to salmon
streams, to the lichen draped forests of British Columbia. Every encounter offers an insightful glimpse into the thoughts and lives
of the naturalist/guide, their charismatic landscape, and ultimately how that person’s work fits into a large map of important ideas
about humans and nature. Luther seems to effortlessly telescope, in and out, among vastly different scales—from the moving grains of
sand in a dune to the broad scope of the history of science."
....

"Boundary Layer is at its most engaging when Luther is introducing the reader to other naturalists. He has a great ear for conversation
and for providing the salient detail that makes a character vivid. He is clearly a fine storyteller. There is plenty of great natural
history and biology, woven into the larger almost philosophical framework. The chapter on lichen biology is really outstanding in its
depth and how it guides the reader through a paradigm shift in progress. This chapter feels like a perfect crescendo of the ideas that
he puts forth in the preceding chapters."
....

"As a plant ecologist myself, I was particularly struck by the deep and thoughtful interpretation of the evolution of the
concepts of the organizing principles of ecological communities. The author provides a provocative analysis of why we think
what we think…from Aristotle to the present debate over the meaning of wilderness—and why it matters to the contemporary
conservation movement."

"Kem Luther's "Boundary Layer" is nothing less than a gorgeous journey through the forest ecosystem layer of ferns,
mosses, lichens and fungi. But it is even more than that. Luther explores the work of scientists working in the Pacific
Northwest, whose work and lives are helping to enrich and navigate our understanding of the natural world. And his journey
back through time, using the work of Von Humboldt and Leopold, amongst others, gives a vertiginous and spellbinding sense
of history to our relation to West Coast ecosystems. From Trevor Goward's work on Lichens, in Northern BC, to Adolf and
Oluna Ceska's work discovering new species of mushroom in the Saanich Peninsula, Vancouver Island, Luther weaves together
an opus of beauty. His is a book a long time coming: readable, exciting, attentive and endlessly knowledgable. It will be
as useful to scientists in the field as it will be to those who wish only to learn more about this rich and diverse region."

Hear more about the book

Talk and Book Signing, Bellingham, Washington
When: Monday, May 16, 2016 7:00 pm
Where: Village Books, 1200 11th Street, Bellingham, Washington.
Slide talk on "Lichens, Chimeras, and Superorganisms: Life On the Borderlands between Species and Ecosystems."
Meet Kem, have your copy of
Boundary Layer signed.

Book Launch, Metchosin, BC
When: Friday, May 20, 2016 7:00 pm
Where: Metchosin Council Chambers, 4450 Happy Valley Road in Metchosin (just behind the firehall).
Part of the Metchosin Talk and Walk series. This will be a one-hour slide talk on "Lichens, Chimeras, and Superorganisms: Life On the
Borderlands between Species and Ecosystems." The next morning, at 10:00,
a lichen walk will begin at the front door of the Metchosin Council Chambers.

Interview about Boundary Layer on Jefferson Public Radio
When: Thursday, July 14, 2016, 8:00-8:30 am, PST
Where: On one of the JPR stations and
livestreamed on the web.
An inteview with host Emily Cureton.

Book reading/signing at Third Place Books in Seattle
When: Wednesday, July 20, 2016, 7:00 pm
Where: Third Place Books, 17171 Bothell Way NE, #A101, Lake Forest Park WA 98155
A book reading and signing

Metchosin Day Book Signing
When: Sunday, September 11, 2016 10:00 am to
4:00 pm
Where: Metchosin, BC, Behind the Fire Hall
Come to Metchosin and enjoy the Annual
Metchosin Day
festivities. Kem Luther and Andy
MacKinnon will be at the Metchosin Foundation
booth signing and selling copies of their most
recent books. All profits from the day go to the
Metchosin Foundation.

University of Victoria Course Lecture
When: Tuesday, September 27, 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Where: University of Victoria, location TBA. Registration required.
Session 1 of a UVic Continuing Ed Course.
Lecture topic: "What does it MEAN?: mycorrhizas, mushrooms, and plants.”
Based on a chapter of Boundary Layer.
Registration required.

East Sooke Book Launch
When: Wednesday, September 28, 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm
Where: East Sooke Community Hall, 1397 Coppermine Road, East Sooke, BC.
Lecture topic: "What does it MEAN?: mycorrhizas, mushrooms, and plants.”
Based on a chapter of Boundary Layer

Beaty Biodiversity Museum, UBC
When: Sunday, October 2, 2016 1:00 pm
Where: Allan Yap Theatre, Beaty Biodiversity Museum, 2212 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC Canada V6T 1Z4
A talk in the Museum's Way Cool lecture series. A slide presentation based on the mushroom chapter of Kem Luther's new
book Boundary Layer. The talk is entitled "Wild mushroom are Way Cool Because..."
The museum
has a page on the web about this talk with a
link to a Facebook invitation reply page.

Victoria Book Launch
When: Tuesday, October 11, 2016 7:00 pm
Where: Fraser Building, Room 159, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC
General meeting of the Victoria Natural History Society A slide talk on
"The Trouble with Wilderness." Copies of Boundary Layer will be available.

Comox/Courtenay BC Book Launch
When: Monday, October 17, 2016, doors open at 6:45 pm, meeting at 7:30 pm
Where: Conference Hall, upper level at the Florence Filberg Centre, 411 Anderton Avenue, Courtenay, BC.
October meeting of the
Comox Valley Horticultural Society. A slide presentation based on the mushroom chapter of Kem Luther's new
book Boundary Layer. The talk is entitled "What does it MEAN? mycorrhizas, mushrooms, and plants"

Cowichan Valley/Duncan BC Book Launch
When: Tuesday, October 18, 2016, meeting at 7:30 pm
Where: Freshwater Ecocentre, 1080 Wharncliffe Rd in Duncan, BC.
October meeting of the
Cowichan Valley Naturalist Society. A slide presentation based on the mushroom chapter of Kem Luther's new
book Boundary Layer. Title of the talk:
"What does it MEAN? mycorrhizas, mushrooms, and
plants"

Quest University Colloquium
When: Tuesday, November 1, 2016. 5:30 pm
Where: Quest University. Multi-Purpose Room, 3200 University Boulevard, Squamish, BC.
Everyone welcome.
A talk on
"The Trouble with Wilderness," based on a chapter from Boundary Layer. Web page is
here.

Botany Night of the Victoria Natural History Society
When: Tuesday, November 15, 2016, 7:30 pm
Where: Swan Lake Nature House, Victoria. Directions to the Nature House on
this page.
Slide talk on "Lichens, Chimeras, and Superorganisms: Life On the Borderlands
between Species and Ecosystems," based on a chapter of Boundary Layer.

Sooke, BC, Book Launch
When: Thursday, November 17, 2016. 7:00 pm
Where: The library, Edward Milne Community School, 6218 Sooke Road, Sooke, British Columbia.
A slide talk on
"The Trouble with Wilderness," based on a chapter from Boundary Layer.

Audubon Book Fair at the Portland Wild Arts Festival
When:
Saturday, November 19, 2016
Where: Montgomery Park, 2701 NW Vaughn, Portland, OR
Kem Luther will join 20 other PNW authors at the
Wild Arts Festival book signing fair.
Stop by to chat with the author, buy a book, get it signed.

Pender Island Book Launch
When: Thursday, February 9, 2017, 1:00 pm
Where: Anglican Church Hall, Pender Island, BC.
February meeting of the Pender Island Garden
Club. Title of the talk:
"What does it MEAN?: mycorrhizas, mushrooms, and
plants.” Based on a chapter of Boundary Layer

NMA talk
When: Thursday, May 11, 2017, 7:00 pm
Where: Bellingham Public Library (downtown), 210 Central Avenue, Bellingham, WA
A talk for the Northwest Mushroomers Association. A slide presentation based on the mushroom chapter of Kem Luther's new
book Boundary Layer. The talk is entitled "What does it MEAN? mycorrhizas, mushrooms, and plants"

Victoria Lily Society talk
When: Wednesday, September 13, 2017, 7:00 pm
Where: Salvation Army Citadel, 4030 Douglas St, Victoria, BC
A talk for the Victoria Lily Society. A slide presentation based on the mushroom chapter of Kem Luther's new
book Boundary Layer. The talk is entitled "What does it MEAN? mycorrhizas, mushrooms, and plants"

CRD Talk and Walk: Fabulous Fungi
When: Sunday, October 1, 10:00 am
Where: Ranger Cabin, Francis/King Regional Park, Munn Road, Saanich, BC (just northwest of intersection with Prospect Lake Road).
Topic: The talk is entitled "What does it MEAN? mycorrhizas, mushrooms, and plants" It will be followed by a short walk
in Francis/King Park to look at local mushrooms. For Adults.
Registration required.

Oak Bay Garden Club talk
When: Thursday, October 26, 2017, 2:00 pm
Where: Monterey Rec Centre, 1442 Monterey Ave, Victoria, BC
A talk for the Oak Bay Garden Club, A slide presentation based on the mushroom chapter of Kem Luther's new
book Boundary Layer. The talk is entitled "What does it MEAN? mycorrhizas, mushrooms, and plants" It will be
followed by a walk from 3 to 4 pm to look at local mushrooms.

CRD Talk and Walk: Fabulous Fungi
When: Sunday, November 12, 2017, 10:00 am (talk) and 1:00 pm (walk)
Where: Ranger Cabin, Francis/King Regional Park, Munn Road, Saanich, BC (just northwest of intersection with Prospect Lake Road).
Topic: The talk at 10:00 am is entitled "What does it MEAN? mycorrhizas, mushrooms, and plants" It will be followed by a short walk
in Francis/King Park to look at local mushrooms. The walk (at 1:00 pm) will be preceded by a short introduction. Each event
is 2 hours long. For Adults.
Registration required. Separate
registration for the talk and walk.

In the local Victoria area, check the shelves at
Munro's Bookstore, 1108 Government Street, has
copies on order. It
should be in the environment section at the far
right rear of the store when it comes in.
The University of Victoria bookstore has copies
in stock.

Contact the author

Kem Luther, a naturalist and writer, moved from a home on Ontario’s Grand River to the southern tip of
Vancouver Island in 2004. He grew up in the Nebraska Sandhills; studied at Loyola (Chicago), Cornell, the University of Chicago,
York University and the University of Toronto; and taught at Eastern Mennonite University, Sheridan College, York University, and the
University of Toronto. He is the author of
Cottonwood Roots and
The Next Generation Gap.

Kem currently has
five prepared slide talks, each about 50 minutes in length, that are drawn from sections of the book.
Please contact him if your group is interested in one of these talks. They are:

(1) Boss Mosses of the Pacific Northwest. Contrary to what many botanists believe, it is
easy to recognize the most common mosses without a microscope and, in most cases, without even a hand lens.
Learn tricks for recognizing mosses, discover the unusual habits of these ancient members of the plant kingdom,
and explore what they contribute to Pacific Northwest ecosystems.

(2) Second Spring: Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest. One benefit of living in the Pacific Northwest
is that we enjoy two springs in one year. In March and April we are treated to a magnificent show of local wildflowers.
In October, our soils thrust up an equally colourful bloom of matchless, munchable mushrooms. This talk explores
the science and scenery of the wild mycorrhizal mushrooms that live in symbiosis with local plants.

(3) Lichens, Chimeras, and Superorganisms: Life On the Borderlands between Species and Ecosystems.
In certain organisms, two lines of biological thinking—the species tradition and the ecosystem tradition—come
together and form a unique borderland. The senior members of the boundary layer between species and ecosystems
are the lichens. In recent decades we have begun to recognize that many other types of organisms—including humans—
live as chimera and conglomerates. These novel superorganisms challenge our standard ideas of species and evolution.

(4) The Trouble with Wilderness: Romantic Wildness in a Post-Colonial World. Current ideas about
wilderness lands and wilderness preservation are heavily influenced by nineteenth century romantic notions of
nature. Recent discussions of wilderness issues have identified these older ideas of wilderness as a problem
to be overcome. The resulting “new wilderness debate” has been vigorous and confrontational. What ideas of
wilderness will guide land conservation in the twenty-first century?

(5) The Two Century, Two Tradition Quest for Living Ecosystems. Alexander von Humboldt pioneered
an ecosystem understanding of the natural world. Over the last two centuries, the ecosystem approach
of von Humboldt, a product of idealism and the Romantic movement, has carried on a running argument with an
understanding of species that is grounded in Enlightenment positivism. The differences between idealism and
positivism are reflected in modern North American and European approaches to environmental science.

Kem annually attends the Whistler Fungus Among Us festival to lead mushroom walks. At the 2012 festival, Whistler's
Pique Magazine put together a
short web video of one of his walks.
One of the Boundary Layer talks, the
one on mycorrhizal mushrooms that he did for
Vancouver's Beaty Museum,
is on
YouTube.